A short tale of broken chains, from Gothic London of 1729.
Despite the cold, and the smell, and the hearty footsteps overhead—any number of men who might have been close enough to hear their cries—the boys never dared a sound. George was six years of age, and his brother Henry, nine. Seven months they had been here, or more, in the cold, in the damp. Most nights, when there was no more light bleeding through cracks in the timber planked floor above, they sat huddled together in the corner of their cellar room, a meagre wool blanket close by, though by now too soiled to sleep on.
There was a window in their little cellar room, or something like a window—a barred grate high off the floor, level with the alley outside. But no one walked by, for the ill-used tavern above them, known as The Hyde, was too close to the stench of Fleet Ditch, too close to the warrens of the sick, to coffin mongers and charnel houses, to raving gin shops and corners for ladies who yelled at those who came near—beckoning in sickly voices. So far was The Hyde from any decent sort of place, that even those few of the night’s watch with a mind to protect their fellow men, would only clap a kerchief to their mouths and shuffle quickly past, their light poles stumping away—the lanterns ringing as they clinked—until the boys could hear them no longer.
Tonight should have been no different, but from the moment their host—the horrid and unpredictable Mr. Withers—came to see them, it might have been clear, to Henry at least, that something was odd. Mr. Withers never came at night.
“Your lucky day, my boys,” he said, rattling the keys at the door. “I shall need you walkin’ strong, so there will be a fine cold porridge for you, upstairs. There be a ship, a ship to take you off my care tomorrow, to a magical place—to America.”
“What is America?” Henry asked, who was certain he had heard the term, somewhere in passing conversations of those with no interest to discover what rotted beneath The Hyde.
"A far country, my dear boys,” Withers answered, his yellow eye bulging at them between the little window bars in the door. “It’s transportation for you, my boys. Captain has paid for you both. Now, there’s likely not food enough but for one, on your journey, so the stout and strongest, Henry I suspect, will see those green shores, and perhaps for you, Georgie, the green shores of Heaven.”
Henry wanted none of it. “We shall stay here sir, I think we shall.”
Mr. Withers made an unpleasant sound, sorting through keys in the dim light of his pungent lantern. “The captain is a scabby knave,” he said. “Paying scarcely a sovereign, but this is your last bread and porridge by my hand, boys. You shall go where your told. Now just you’ll wait, and I’ll return with my right keys. Perhaps pray now, for what mercy you’re owed.”
Their chuckling host made his way back down the hall, and for a moment Withers thought he’d heard a sound away behind him, like a slender wrenching of metal. But that would be the boys scraping their empty tin with the spoon again; ungrateful creatures they were.
Returning minutes later, Mr. Withers rattled again at the door, but with a whine it pushed inward, unlocked. By the draft he knew at once the little window grate was broken, the panes hollow, open to the dark. The boys were gone.
Aghast he raised his light with a curse. “You never climbed that! Not for so high a window!” he cried, searching the room. And he found a man—a man all in black—crouching just there in the corner where the prisoners should be huddled. But even the man’s face was covered, tight shrouded like a corpse, and topped with a cocked hat, as any common rogue might wear it.
“Oh dear me sir,” Mr. Withers grunted, drawing the long knife from his hip—his little Bessie, his carving knife. “You’re in a spot of trouble, friend, if you’re come to purloin the property of Mr. Fargrave, my employer.”
“There are other children,” the crouching man said. “Where are the others?”
“Them what?” Withers grunted again. “The others? Produce coin for their purchase, and I’ll have you the address. It’s all in the ledger of course; we keeps every record. But you’ll be wasting in regret for this insult, sir, before such knowledge be of use to you.”
“You keep a ledger? Good.” The man in black slowly stood.
Mr. Withers put his fingers to his lips and blew a loud whistle, sudden and sharp. “I’ll rouse my rough lads for you sir!” he warned. “Perhaps you’ll buy us off, before the end?”
The man in black stood very still. “Whistling will not save you,” he said.
A glimmer of steel slashed, and Mr. Withers found himself gored in the throat. A chain pulled the hook free, a boot met his chest, and knocked backward through the barred door he crashed to the wet floor, his eyes finding only the prone fire of the lantern, as it dwindled and died.
Henry and George had been slipped into a wagon outside, wrapped separate in blankets that smelled not of human stench, but of clean wool, and they did not scratch. A figure was there with them, crouching in the dark as the wagon moved. She was all in black, with a cornered hat, even her eyes covered.
A damp kerchief she employed to wipe their faces and necks, bottles of milk she put to their lips, with bacon and bread following, mending the nauseous ache in their bellies.
The coach picked up speed, rolling on what sounded like soft ground, with heavy wheels wrapped in rope or something like. It was many bites before Henry overcame his nerves, his little frame charged with food—well enough to speak.
“Are you for the captain, to take us away, for transport-ation,” he said.
“You’re not to be sold,” the woman said. She was young, but her voice was hard, like one who only spoke in times of danger. “We are taking you home, to meet your mother, to meet the queen.”
“The queen!” George gasped through thick chews.
"The queen in the dark, who will care for you,” the woman replied. “You are children of Saunmoor now.”
